


Midnight Garden

by lferion



Category: Blood Ties
Genre: Adventure, Gen, Unusual monsters, Yuletide, Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 03:32:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry takes a dare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Garden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mojave Dragonfly (Dragonfly)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonfly/gifts).



> The idea for the bejitaburu-demon came from the Radish Spirit in the elevator in "Spirited Away". Plus, someone has been listening to R.E.M.'s "Gardening at Night" way too much.
> 
> Many thanks to Tree and the late night denizens of #yuletide for beta and encouragement.  
> Written as a Yuletide 2007 yuletide treat for Mojave Dragonfly, upload #1342.

*** *** *** *** ***

Oh, this was _not_ good. Severed heads didn't belong in the middle of the road. Even if the road in question was not heavily trafficked at the best of times, and positively deserted at this hour of the morning. Night. Of course, that begged the question of what _he_ was doing here at this hour. There weren't even any street people in the area.

Henry Fitzroy grimaced in distaste. The hair made an unpleasant crunchy squish under his foot. Why did this kind of thing happen to him? It was Celluci's fault, he decided. Vicki wouldn't have called him if Mike hadn't gone on at length about having to stay late to process a 'metric buttload' of homeless folk who had apparently gone crazy and were assaulting people with smells. Smells. Henry wrinkled his own aristocratic nose. There certainly was a smell here. He picked the thing up with some reluctance, looking at it in more detail.

There was no blood. The head was dry, drained. Dirt crusted the eyes and hair. The flesh was grey, and Henry could pick out marks on the sunken cheeks. Some kind of kanji; not among the small store of characters he knew from what manga he had perused. That alone put this out of the realm of random or even ordinary murder, much less unfortunate accident.

Not good, and dawn was not that far away.

The smell was getting stronger, more complex. Sharp green acid bit at the back of his throat, changing to cloying sweetness and then to an overpowering stench of decomposition, but nothing human, or even animal, except this sad head. Where was the body that went with it?

Kanji, but the face was not Asian – no epicanthic fold over the staring, dull eyes, and the grimy hair was light and wriggly. The man had been dead for days, long enough for the flesh to dry to a parchment texture. The cuts that shaped the letters had been made with something very sharp and small; a penknife or a pocketknife. Possibly a vegetable knife. And the blood had been drained from the head thoroughly.

What was he doing here, holding a severed, bloodless head disfigured with letters he could not read? Why wasn't he writing, or drawing, or sitting somewhere watching pretty people go by?

>   
>  _"And I suppose you could find a smell from a mile away, with that so-superior nose of yours." Celluci had gotten up and was right in his face. "Track it down and mop it up without raising a sweat. Or whatever the equivalent would be, for you."_
> 
> Vicki winced and gave Henry that look_. The one even he was not immune too. The "this is about to get out of hand, and it had better not be me who has to clean it up" look._
> 
> Henry raised his eyebrows and calmly stared back up at the detective. "Yes, I could."
> 
> "Oh yeah? Prove it. I'd like to see you find a smell that none of these guys can even agree on a description for. Go on. I dare you."
> 
> And more fool he, he'd taken Celluci up on that.

  
There was a wet splich behind him, and a sudden scent of dry earth, a shocking reminder of the soil he'd had to fight through those many years ago. Now there was an edge of iron in the smell, iron and chalk and rot. And under the iron a strange, slow vibration that scraped against his preternatural senses, alien and seemingly full of the taste of sunlight.

_Run, you fool._ But now there was no place to run. Henry turned, and there it was, headless and misshapen, roots and twigs and ciliate tendrils where once human limbs had been. It was a plant-thing -- vegetable now, not animal -- green and groping.

Behind the apparition came the patter of slippered feet and a frantic, high-pitched voice. "Bejitaburu-da-mon! No! I am your master! Come back. I have prepared your place, the soil and water and all the sun you could want."

All those twigs and tendrils were reaching out for the head in Henry's hands. No, for the head _and_ Henry's hands. There was a wall to his back, and the very aura of the thing seemed to affect his senses, slowing him. Making it hard for him to move, to think. The head was stuck, burning his fingers like sunlight, and when some of the hair brushed his wrist, latching on, he realized with horror that it was trying to grow. What he had thought was hair was actually fine root-strands, and the proximity of the rest of the thing was bringing it to such life as it had. And that life wanted him. Was drawn to his undead flesh, and all the richness of the blood that sustained him.

The mad, blue little man was snatching at the creature. "Come! I command you!"

Who could possibly have imagined that a vegetable-spirit would have a taste for vampires?

Something was wrong with Henry's eyes; blue and red flashes dazzled him, and there was a wavering scream in his ears. The weight in his hands was tugging him closer to the woody rotten smell, wet roses and must and bitter allium. Wherever the ropy projections touched him they bit and burned like acid. Blessed Mary, it was _absorbing_ him, as if he were fertilizer. Voices chittered, but he could not make sense of them.

"Foreman, _restrain_ that man. Yes, the one in nothing but slippers and woad!"

There was an indistinct mumble and Henry could feel the sharp things creeping under his skin.

"Indecent exposure for a start! Get the damn weed killer, Hotchkiss. Full strength. Yes, that's what the man said. Now, dammit!"

And then a stream of liquid agony spilled over him, worse than the earthy sucking; black, not bright, and for a brief moment he was nothing but pain. A green-gold rush filled his ears, flashed through his veins and fled out his pores. Then he was nothing at all.

There was a light flickering on his face, and the Hunger ravened in him. Henry opened his eyes to the white beam of a flashlight. An all too familiar face with an all too insufferable grin looked down on him where he lay flattened in the greasy refuse.

"Well, _fancy_ finding you here."

Detective-Sergeant Mike Celluci, rescuing him from an accidentally manifested vegetable-spirit that had tried to absorb him as fertilizer. Henry was never going to hear the end of this one. But Vicky was already helping him up and brushing him off. Her blood was a promise and a balm to his senses.

He could live with that.

In the end, it developed that it was only a stray spirit, drawn by the arrogant, thoughtless power of a lunatic. A lunatic who wanted to grow a garden that would take over the city, starting with a warehouse roof. Bone-meal and blood, water and the fire of captured sunlight.

Be careful what you ask for. You might get it. Henry knew all about that.

*** *** *** *** ***


End file.
